“Seeing is believing, but experiencing is knowing. Seek to experience and you will never have to believe again.” – Alexis Brooks

I’ll never forget one afternoon, maybe fifteen or so years ago, I had an epiphany: “It’s not enough to believe, I need to know.”

I had just been downstairs visiting my father’s vast library of books and briefly glimpsed the cover of one of his latest finds; a book called How to Know God by Deepak Chopra. I hadn’t read the book, but only looked briefly at the title. Something about it brought about this epiphany. “There’s something missing with the idea of belief,” I thought.

I’ve always been one to seek out experience as a means for building my so-called worldview, rather than let a heap of third party ideologies and teachings build it for me.

With a sustained tenacity for seeking out life’s big questions, I suppose that set the stage for the ultimate epiphany I’d carry forward.

Just yesterday, I was having a discussion with a gentleman about well – life’s journey. He then asked me, “Alexis, do you believe in God?” I then looked at him. Smiled. And then said, “Well no. I like to think I know God, or at least have a sense of God based on my own experiences.” I then went on to explain my philosophy about belief vs. knowing, and although I wasn’t surprised at his reaction, I began to ask myself, “Why are so many people so fixated on the idea of belief?”

This prompted me to look up the formal definition of belief, but rather than go to the dictionary, I went to the thesaurus and found some words that might illustrate my point; that belief is based on an accepted idea vs. direct knowing.

Here are some of the words I found:

Assumption

Conjecture

Hope

Theory

Granted, there are additional words that describe belief amongst the list that suggest belief is much more concrete, but still we as human creatures rely so heavily on developing a system of belief based on what we are told by others vs. our own first-person experience.

Also, of interesting note, after looking up another word: belie (believe without the “ve”) I got this definition: To show to be false; contradict. To misrepresent.

Yet another curious juxtaposition. As with many words, could this be one more clue as to the true meaning undergirding the fundamentals of belief? Are we really “misrepresenting” or “contradicting” reality by not exploring it first-hand?

And so, this idea is what has inspired my little talk for this episode of Conscious Commentary.

Let’s dig in!

If you’re receiving this post via email, be sure to CLICK HERE to listen to this episode.